Harishchandra and His Minister Killing a Tiger: Folio from a Harishchandra Series India (Maharashtra and northern Karnataka)

1850-04-09T00:00:00Z

Killing a tiger in personal combat was universally seen as the ultimate feat of valor in Indian martial society. Thus it is not surprising that this dynamic moment in the Harishchandra narrative was chosen for illustration. Itinerant storytellers of the Chitrakarthi caste used a series of about forty paintings like this one to recount the epic. The bold graphic quality allowed an assembled village or town audience to readily read these narrative pictures in public performance. Members of the Chitrakarthi caste were responsible for producing these paintings as well as narrating them in performance as they traveled throughout the western Deccan.